Private clinics 'offering IVF to older women'

An increasingly large number of babies are being born to older women through IVF procedures.

This is according to recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, which show that there has been a 55 per cent increase between 2008 and 2009 in the number of women over the age of 50 having babies.

Indeed, more than 100 women over 50 gave birth last year, including 14 who were over 55.

While the NHS will not offer treatment to anybody over the age of 39, private fertility clinics are free to make that decision for themselves.

Juliet Le Page underwent fertility treatment at the age of 47.

She told the Daily Mail that she had not experienced any desire to have a baby until she met her future husband at the age of 43.

"I am a lot more child-focused now," she told the paper.

"If I had been in my 20s, knowing what I was like then, I would have been thinking 'What can I do tonight?' rather than 'What can the children do?'"